He used to dress like a homeless person. On purpose. Two or three
nights a week, he’d rub dirt in his hair and clothes before walking
the dark streets of Pittsburgh searching for the very people he was
trying to impersonate. This was his way of connecting with those who
had been excluded from healthcare. Meet Dr Jim Withers, a.k.a. Street
Doctor, who has pioneered the concept of street medicine.

As Founder and Medical Director of Operation Safety Net, part of
Pittsburgh Mercy Health System and Trinity Health, he, along with his
staff and a band of volunteers, brings quality healthcare to the
homeless right where they live – under bridges and overpasses, in
alleys, and along the rivers. Says Dr Withers, “I was really shocked
[to see] how ill people were on the street. It was like [being
transported] to a third-world country. Young and old, people with
mental illness, runaway kids, women [who had] fled domestic violence,
veterans… and each one has their own story.”

For over 23 years now, Dr Withers has been treating the homeless. He
explains his reasons for taking this stand, “As a teaching physician,
I became convinced that we needed a new [kind of] ‘class room’ in
which we could more directly experience the reality of those who were
socially excluded from healthcare, and from society in general.”

In 1992, he began to dress as a homeless person and interact with
those living on the streets. “My guide was a formerly homeless man and
soon there were other volunteer nurses, medical students and formerly
homeless partners who joined in. Realising that a new healthcare
system was emerging [one that is more commercially oriented], I
developed services, including electronic records, case management, a
hospital consult service, a medical education curriculum and an
office, specifically for the homeless,” he says, adding, “Over time,
we have grown to become a significant street medicine programme
providing 24×7 coverage for all those who sleep on the streets. We
have brought people into [the ambit of] primary care, housed over
1,200 chronically homeless persons in the past 11 years, created a
severe weather shelter, introduced legal services and educated over
100 students per year. Not only are the lives of many being saved [as
part of this initiative], but we have been able to reduce the costs
incurred by emergency rooms and hospitals.” When Dr Withers had
started Operation Safety Net it was a very novel concept. However, he
had figured out that, as healthcare increasingly became a profit
driven profession, a programme like this would have the potential to
make a real difference.

Interestingly, it was his time spent in India, as a medical student in
the early 1980s and then again in the early 1990s, when he had the
opportunity to meet up with Mother Teresa in Kolkata, that opened his
mind to the idea of practicing medicine for the benefit of the masses.
“I have a deep connection with India. In early Eighties, I was
influenced greatly by a two-month medical school experience I had in
Mysore [Karnataka] during which I saw scores of female burn victims
coming into the Mission Hospital. They seldom had any visitors and
would not speak to anyone. I sensed an indescribable sadness in them.
Many eventually died. When I asked the attending physician about this
situation he told me these incidents happened because the stoves were
dangerous and the women’s saris caught fire. It was much later that I
discovered that in reality these women had been burnt for dowry by
their husbands’ families. What was even more shocking for me was the
fact that this was a common occurrence and that the attending had
chosen to misrepresent this appalling reality. During that time I had
ended up marrying a south Indian woman whose brother-in-law was a
judge. He was constantly called to take statements from dying women
who had been burnt. Almost never would they testify against their
husband. I never forgot this brutal domestic violence and it later
encouraged me to dedicate my medical career to those who suffer from
all forms of social injustice,” he shares candidly.

He came back to India in 1993 after he had started Operation Safety
Net to look up a Dr Jack Preger, who was doing similar kind of work in
Kolkata. “He had been doing this since 1979 and I wanted get a chance
to interact with him; learn from his experiences. But as I was on my
way to call on him, on a whim, I decided to take a slight detour to
Mother’s Home. At the door, I told the nuns the work I was trying to
do and about street medicine and asked if the administrator would be
able to take out time to meet me and share the work being done at
Mother’s Home. To my immense surprise they invited me to meet with
Mother Teresa! I was able to spend nearly an hour with her during
which I found her to be a brilliant and forward-looking woman. Even
though she was in her eighties, she did not dwell on the past, but was
focused on the future. Her clear commitment to her principles
reinforced my own values. I saw how sending a clear, simple moral
message could have a global impact. Street medicine, I believe, is
having that same kind of impact,” explains the good doctor who
received CNN’s Top Hero Award last year.

Talking about homeless women he shares that “the percentage of women
living on the streets in the US has gone up in the last two decades –
it’s nearly 30 per cent today. Most of them have experienced some form
of violence and the majority has actually escaped domestic violence”.
According to him, homeless women generally battle with “depression,
post traumatic stress disorder, mental illness and addictions”. “All
of these issues are inter-related and cannot be addressed in
isolation. By ‘going to the people’, street medicine allows us to
become a part of their lives and gain their trust. Relationships
forged among those living on the streets are very complicated. As a
rule, I never force anyone to do what I think they should but simply
provide them with a consistent, loving support system so that they can
reclaim their own self determination,” he points out.

Gender violence, Dr Withers believes, has multiple, far-reaching,
physical and emotional consequences on the survivors living on the
streets. He says, “Denial and silence are the real enemies in such
cases. Nonetheless, I have seen how reaching out can result in
positive action. I have a dear friend who went through a lot before
she was able to get her life back in order. Lois had a long history of
unstable living circumstances, violence by those she trusted and
homelessness. I was called in to see her one winter; she was sleeping
next to a church in the snow. From that freezing night when we rescued
her it took her a long time to first trust us enough to help her and
then to get back on her feet. Her recovery has been a remarkable
lesson to us all.”

Having firmly established the efficacy of his programme Dr Withers is
hopeful that he would be able to take it to countries, especially
India, where it can truly impact the lives of those in dire need of
assistance and competent medical care. “Having street medicine in
every community transforms us,” he says, “We begin to see that we’re
all in this together. You can’t solve difficult problems if you can’t
get close enough to see them. That’s why I insist on ‘going to the
people’.”

A random sampling of 76 women has revealed that most hysterectomies were medically unnecessary.

There’s a nexus between private hospitals and government health workers at the grass-root level to bring the patients

A study by a non-governmental organisation in Kalaburagi in Karnataka that threw light on some private hospitals putting women of the backward Lambani community through “medically unnecessary” hysterectomies has kicked up a storm here. The State government, on learning of the study, has closed down one of the hospitals where a high number of hysterectomies were performed.

A study by the Karnataka Janaarogya Chaluvali (KJC), an NGO working on health issues, shows high incidence of women undergoing hysterectomy in private hospitals in Kalaburagi — particularly those living in the Banjara tandas and in the neighbouring Omerga and Solapur cities of Maharashtra.

Sample of 76 taken

A random sampling of 76 women (of 487 who underwent hysterectomy in the recent past) has revealed that most hysterectomies were medically unnecessary. Gullible women were made “easy victims” by those running private hospitals in Kalaburagi city.

Of the women studied, 52 per cent were aged less than 35 and 29 per cent were below the age of 30.

In a private hospital in Kalaburagi city — which accounted for the largest cases of 156 hysterectomies — as many as 32 per cent were aged less than 30 and 59 per cent less than 35 years.

A spokesperson of KJC told The Hindu that the modus operandi was to “instil fear” among patients with common menstrual problems by saying that their uterus was irreparably “damaged” and needed to be removed immediately.

She claimed that there was a reason to believe a nexus between private hospitals and government grassroots-level health workers to bring recruit the patients.

The study, she claimed, had several instances where scan reports of the patients indicated other problems relating to kidney and urinary bladder. But the doctors, without treating these problems, performed hysterectomy although the uterus was a “normal study” in the scan reports.

On an average, around Rs. 27,000 is charged for hysterectomy, apart from hospital and medicine charges.

The spokesperson said 68 of the 76 women interviewed complained of continued health issues even after hysterectomy.

What is more, hospitals seldom handed over complete scan reports and discharge summaries to the patients. Only 54 of the patients interviewed had full records.

There’s a nexus between private hospitals and government health workers at the grass-root level to bring the patients

The Karnataka Janaarogya Chaluvali (KJC), which exposed large-scale unnecessary hysterectomy performed on women from Banjara tandas in Kalaburagi district by few private hospitals, has demanded that the district administration act against all the hospitals allegedly involved in the racket.

In a memorandum to Deputy Commissioner Vipul Bansal here on Thursday, KJC State convener Akhila Vasan said that after reports in The Hindu and a sting operation by TV9 to expose the racket, the private hospital concerned had shifted nearly 25 inpatients who had undergone hysterectomy to other hospitals hurriedly even before the District Health and Family welfare officials visited the hospital.

He was accompanied by district conveners Sister Teena Xavier, Anand Raj and Vittal Chikkani.

KJC provided a list of 71 hospitals and nursing homes in Kalaburagi, Omerga, and Solapur in Maharashtra and Tandur in Telangana where unnecessary hysterectomy were performed on over 700 normal patients.

The memorandum also pointed out that Kalaburagi had become an epicentre for conducting such illegal operations on healthy young women and removing reproductive organs.

KJC also said that none of the private hospitals maintained medical records and 95 per cent of the hospitals and nursing homes failed to provide discharge summary details to the patients. There were instances of medical records of the patients being destroyed after the patients developed complications.

Levelling serious charges against the private hospitals, KJC said that a 23-year-old woman of Kinni Sadak tanda in Kalaburagi taluk, who underwent hysterectomy in a private hospital in Kalaburagi on July 17, died later due to post-operative complications.

KJC said that they were in possession of the medical records of several women who had died after the hysterectomy surgeries in the district.

They said that erring doctors of the private hospital should be arrested and cases booked under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Atrocities (Prevention) Act.

Patients who have been shifted from the private hospital should be obtained and they should be admitted in Government Hospital and provided expert treatment.

Group provides list of 71 hospitals and nursing homes in Kalaburagi, and Omerga, and Solapur in Maharashtra, and Tandur in Telangana

The subjects are usually society’s most vulnerable and the doctors rarely have to answer for their horrific crimes.

August 29, 2014 |
Evil scares us. Arguably our best horror stories, the ones that give us nightmares, are about evil people doing evil things—especially evil experiments. The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells is a classic that comes to mind. In modern cinema, movies like The Human Centipede continue that gruesome tradition. But these are fictional. The truth is that we need only look at recent human history to find real, live, utterly repugnant evil. Worse yet, it is evil perpetrated by doctors.

Here are 10 of the most evil experiments ever performed on human beings—black and other people of color, women, prisoners, children and gay people have been the predominant victims.

1. The Tuskegee Experiments

There’s a good reason many African Americans are wary of the good intentions of government and the medical estblishment. Even today, many believe the conspiracy theory that AIDS, which ravaged the African-American community, both gay and straight, was created by the government to wipe out African Americans. What happened in Tuskegee, Alabama in 1932 is one explanation for these fears.

At the time, treatments for syphilis, a sexually transmitted disease that causes pain, insanity and ultimately, death, were mostly toxic and ineffective (things like mercury, which caused, kidney failure, mouth ulcers, tooth loss, insanity, and death). Government-funded doctors decided it would be interesting to see if no treatment at all was better than the treatments they were using. So began the Tuskegee experiments.

Over the course of the next 40 years, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male denied treatment to 399 syphilitic patients, most of them poor, black, illiterate sharecroppers. Even after penicillin emerged as an effective treatment in 1947, these patients, who were not told they had syphilis, but were informed they suffered from “bad blood,” were denied treatment, or given fake placebo treatments. By the end of the study, in 1972, only 74 of the subjects were still alive. Twenty eight patients died directly from syphilis, 100 died from complications related to syphilis, 40 of the patients’ wives were infected with syphilis, and 19 children were born with congenital syphilis.

2. The Aversion Project

They didn’t like gay people in apartheid-era South Africa. Especially in the armed forces. How they got rid of them is shocking. Using army psychiatrists and military chaplains, who were, presumably privy to private, “confidential” confessions, the apartheid regime flushed out homosexuals in the armed forces. But it did not evict them from the military. The homosexual “undesirables” were sent to a military hospital near Pretoria, to a place called Ward 22 (which in itself sounds terrifying).

There, between 1971 and 1989, many victims were submitted to chemical castrations and electric shock treatment, meant to cure them of their homosexual “condition.” As many as 900 homosexuals, mostly 16-24 years old who had been drafted and had not voluntarily joined the military, were subjected to forced “sexual reassignment” surgeries. Men were surgically turned into women against their will, then cast out into the world, the gender reassignment often incomplete, and without the means to pay for expensive hormones to maintain their new sexual identities.

The head of this project, Dr. Aubrey Levin, went on to become a clinical professor at the University of Calgary. That is until 2010, when his license was suspended for making sexual advances towards a male student. He was sentenced to five years in prison for other sexual assaults (against males).

3. Guatemalan STD Study

Syphilis seemed to bring out the inherent racism in government-funded doctors in the 1940s. Tuskegee’s black people weren’t the only victims of morally reprehensible studies of this disease. Turns out Guatemalans were also deemed suitable unknowing guinea pigs by the U.S. government.

Penicillin having emerged as a cure for syphilis in 1947, the government decided to see just how effective it was. The way to do this, the government decided, was to turn syphilitic prostitutes loose on Guatemalan prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers, none of whom consented to be subjects of an experiment. If actual sex didn’t infect the subject, then surreptitious inoculation did the trick. Once infected, the victim was given penicillin to see if it worked. Or not given penicillin, just to see what happened, apparently. About a third of the approximately 1,500 victims fell into the latter group. More than 80 “participants” in the experiment died.

The Guatemalan study was led by John Charles Cutler, who subsequently participated in the later stages of Tuskegee. In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton formally apologized to Guatemala for this dark chapter in American history.

4. Agent Orange Experiments

Prisoners, like people of color, have often been the unwilling objects of evil experiments. From 1965 to 1966, Dr. Albert Kligman, funded by Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson, and the U.S. Army, conducted what was deemed “dermatological research” on approximately 75 prisoners. What was actually being studied was the effects of Agent Orange on humans.

Prisoners were injected with dioxin (a toxic byproduct of Agent Orange)—468 times the amount the study originally called for. The results were prisoners with volcanic eruptions of chloracne (severe acne combined with blackheads, cysts, pustules, and other really bad stuff) on the face, armpits and groin. Long after the experiments ended, prisoners continued to suffer from the effects of the exposure. Dr. Kligman, apparently very enthusiastic about the study, was quoted as saying, “All I saw before me were acres of skin… It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time.” Kligman went on to become the doctor behind Retin-A, a major treatment for acne.

5. Irradiation of Black Cancer Patients

During the Cold War, the U.S. and the Soviet Union spent much of their time trying to figure out if they could survive a nuclear catastrophe. How much radiation could a human body take? This would be important information for the Pentagon to know, in order to protect its soldiers in the event they were crazy enough to start an atomic holocaust. Enter the seeming go-to government choice for secret experimentation: unknowing African Americans.

From 1960 until 1971, Dr. Eugene Saenger, a radiologist at the University of Cincinnati, led an experiment exposing 88 cancer patients, poor and mostly black, to whole body radiation, even though this sort of treatment had already been pretty well discredited for the types of cancer these patients had. They were not asked to sign consent forms, nor were they told the Pentagon funded the study. They were simply told they would be getting a treatment that might help them. Patients were exposed, in the period of one hour, to the equivalent of about 20,000 x-rays worth of radiation. Nausea, vomiting, severe stomach pain, loss of appetite, and mental confusion were the results. A report in 1972 indicated that as many as a quarter of the patients died of radiation poisoning. Dr. Saenger recently received a gold medal for “career achievements” from the American College of Radiology.

6. Slave Experiments

It should be no surprise that experiments were often conducted on human chattel during America’s shameful slavery history. The man considered the father of modern gynecology, J. Marion Sims, conducted numerous experiments on female slaves between 1845 and 1849. The women, afflicted with vesico-vaginal fistulas, a tear between the vagina and the bladder, suffered greatly from the condition and were incontinent, resulting in societal ostracism.

Because Sims felt the surgery was, “not painful enough to justify the trouble,” as he said in an 1857 lecture, the operations were done without anesthesia. Being slaves, the women had no say as to whether they wanted the procedures or not, and some were subjected to as many as 30 operations. There are many advocates for Dr. Sims, pointing out that the women would have been anxious for any possibility of curing their condition, and that anesthetics were new and unproven at the time. Nevertheless, it is telling that black slaves and not white women, who presumably would have been just as anxious, were the subjects of the experiments.

7. “The Chamber”

Back to the Cold War. Prisoners were again the victims, as the Soviet Secret Police conducted poison experiments in Soviet gulags. The Soviets hoped to develop a deadly poison gas that was tasteless and odorless. At the laboratory, known as “The Chamber,” unknowing and unwilling prisoners were given preparations of mustard gas, ricin, digitoxin, and other concoctions, hidden in meals, beverages or given as “medication.” Presumably, many of these prisoners were not happy with their meals, although, being the gulag, records are spotty. The Secret Police apparently did finally come up with their dream poison, called C-2. According to witnesses, it caused actual physical changes (victims became shorter), and victims subsequently weakened and died within 15 minutes.

8. World War II: Heyday of Evil Experiments

While evil experiments may have been going on in the U.S. during World War II (Tuskegee, for example), it’s hard to argue that the Nazis and the Japanese are the indisputable kings of evil experimentation. The Germans, of course, conducted their well-known experiments on Jewish prisoners (and, to a much lesser extent, Romany people and homosexuals and Poles, among others) in their concentration/death camps. In 1942, the Luftwaffe submerged naked prisoners in ice water for up to three hours to study the effects of cold temperatures on human beings and to devise ways to rewarm them once subjected.

Other prisoners were subjected to streptococcus, tetanus and gas gangrene. Blood vessels were tied off to create artificial “battlefield” wounds. Wood shavings and glass particles were rubbed deep into the wounds to aggravate them. The goal was to test the effectiveness of sulfonamide, an antibacterial agent. Women were forcibly sterilized. More gruesomely, one woman had her breasts tied off with string to see how long it took for her breastfeeding child to die. She eventually killed her own child to stop the suffering. And there is the infamous Josef Mengele, whose experimental “expertise” was on twins. He injected various chemicals into twins, and even sewed two together to create conjoined twins. Mengele escaped to South America after the war and lived until his death in Brazil, never answering for his evil experiments.

Not to be outdone, the Japanese killed as many as 200,000 people during numerous experimental atrocities in both the Sino-Japanese War and WWII. Some of the experiments put the Nazis to shame. People were cut open and kept alive, without the assistance of anesthesia. Body limbs were amputated and sewn on other parts of the body. Limbs were frozen and then thawed, resulting in gangrene. Grenades and flame-throwers were tested on living humans. Various bacteria and diseases were purposely injected into prisoners to study the effects. Unit 731, led by Commander Shiro Ishii, conducted these experiments in the name of biological and chemical warfare research. Before Japan surrendered, in 1945, the Unit 731 lab was destroyed and the prisoners all executed. Ishii himself was never prosecuted for his evil experiments, and in fact was granted immunity by Douglas MacArthur in exchange for the information Ishii gained from the experiments.

9. The Monster Study

Add children to the list of vulnerable people subjected to evil experiments. In 1939, Wendell Johnson, University of Iowa speech pathologist, and his grad student Mary Tudor, conducted stuttering experiments on 22 non-stuttering orphan children. The children were split into two groups. One group was given positive speech therapy, praising them for their fluent speech. The unfortunate other group was given negative therapy, harshly criticizing them for any flaw in their speech abilities, labeling them stutterers.

The result of this cruel experiment was that children in the negative group, while not transforming into full-fledged stutterers, suffered negative psychological effects and several suffered from speech problems for the rest of their lives. Formerly normal children came out of the experiment, dubbed “The Monster Study,” anxious, withdrawn and silent. Several, as adults, eventually sued the University of Iowa, which settled the case in 2007.

10. Project 4.1

Project 4.1 was a medical study conducted on the natives of the Marshall Islands, who in 1952 were exposed to radiation fallout from the Castle Bravo nuclear test at Bikini Atoll, which inadvertently blew upwind to the nearby islands. Instead of informing the residents of the island of their exposure, and treating the victims while they studied them, the U.S. elected instead just to watch quietly and see what happened.

At first the effects were inconclusive. For the first 10 years, miscarriages and stillbirths increased but then returned to normal. Some children had developmental problems or stunted growth, but no conclusive pattern was detectable. After that first decade, though, a pattern did emerge, and it was ugly: Children with thyroid cancer significantly above what would be considered normal. By 1974, almost a third of exposed islanders developed tumors. A Department of Energy report stated that, “The dual purpose of what is now a DOE medical program has led to a view by the Marshallese that they were being used as ‘guinea pigs’ in a ‘radiation experiment.’”

Larry Schwartz is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer with a focus on health, science and nutrition. He works at Scholastic Inc. in the classroom magazine division on Superscience and Science World.

This IGIMS OFFICE ORDER (dated 7/12/13) about “re constitution ofICC”. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention,Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and Rules 2013 have come intoeffect from 9th Dec 2013. Therefore IGIMS has to issue a new officeorder.

Looking at the Officer Order the most important part which is missingis that the reconstituted ICC does not speak about 1 member from(NGO/Association committed to the cause of women/person) as per theSexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition andRedressal) Act, 2013.

Therefore the very reconstituted ICC is bad in law.

Rupashree Dasgupta was appointed Associate Professor, Nursing, Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS), Patna, in October 2011. Her appointment was a logical next step in an academic and professional life in which she has been an outstanding achiever with many merits and gold medals to her credit. These qualifications along with the requisite experience earned her a spot as Associate Professor in Bihar’s premier medical institute. Excited and determined, Rupashree got ready to enter a new phase of life teaching nursing. However, nothing prepared her for what was to follow on the IGIMS campus.

In the first few weeks itself, Rupashree started to realise that the Institute was not being run in a professional manner, but rather like the fiefdom of the then Director, Arun Kumar, who is the brother-in-law of the then DGP Bihar, Mr. Abhayanand. From our experience in women’s movement we know that such situations with powerful men in positions of authority do not bode well for women in terms of ensuring a safe and a professional workspace. In Rupashree’s case, this manifested itself as unrelenting and unwelcome sexual advances and sexual harassment.

Soon after she joined the IGIMS, Arun Kumar demanded sexual favours in return for ‘letting’ her continue staying in the staff quarters (a request that she had placed as a prerequisite for taking up this job and one that was accepted by the interview panel). When Rupashree refused to comply, the Director created, directly and via other staff members and people known to him, a hostile and a dangerous workplace. Outlined below is a very brief summary of the myriad ways in which she was harassed.

She was frequently shunted from one staff quarter to the other without any explanation; refused leave or marked absent when she was on duty; her office sealed without any prior information; her movements restricted and important documents stolen from her room. She was threatened and stalked and there were also incidents of people banging at her door at all odd hours of the night. She was also apprehended by unknown visitors who came to her staff quarter threatening her to withdraw cases and to leave Bihar.

IGIMS also refused to give her any administrative responsibilities, while at the same time, offering these to her juniors. She was served a slew of notices over issues ranging from leave to ‘misbehaviour’; she was also served a show cause notice stating that her appointment was faulty, and hence she will be demoted.

Some of her colleagues too, emboldened by Dr Arun Kumar’s behaviour, started passing disparaging and sexually-coloured remarks. At his behest, a signature drive was carried out against her under the banner of a non-existent Faculty Association. In fact, some time later, many signatories withdrew their names from the said letter.

As we have seen in countless other cases, when all else fails then the next strategy is to declare the woman ‘mentally unstable’ so as to discredit her and her compliant of sexual harassment. Predictably enough, this is exactly what IGIMS did in the most shocking manner by circulating a written statement, declaring Rupashree to be mentally unstable, to the local police station and other government offices. It is not a coincidence that this was done right after she had filed a case of physical assault against Sushma Charley, a faculty member, who had brutally assaulted her at the behest of Dr Arun Kumar.

When Rupashree moved the gender harassment committee at IGIMS, she was turned down without as much as a preliminary hearing. The committee merely asked her to submit an application to the administration. This is a shocking lapse on the part of the said Committee and would have been a clear violation of the Vishakha Guidelines of the Supreme Court (that were then being followed, in absence of a law)and the current Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition & Redressal) Act 2013and the Criminal Law Amendment Act 2013. The points below illustrate how the formation of the Committee itself was manipulated to ensure that Rupashree did not stand a chance of a fair hearing:

The Committee, constituted on 25th May 2012 by Dr Arun Kumar, was headed by Sudha Thakur, Chairperson, and Ms. Lucy Benedict, Nursing Tutor of School of Nursing, IGIMS Member Secretary.

This Committee was dissolved after the above mentioned (ref to point 3) signature drive took place. The Committee did not even complete its schedule tenure of 3 years.

Soon after a new Committee was formed by the Dr Arun Kumar and predictably included ‘his’ people from the signature drive against Rupashree.

Rupashree’s situation took a turn for the worse on 15th July 2013. That very morning she had been operated upon after an accidental wrist injury and had barely managed to recover from the surgery when she was summarily discharged.

That same night at 11.30 pm, police from Gandhi Maidan mahila police station visited Rupashree and informed her that then Chief Minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, has taken interest in her case and has summoned her to know details. Rupashree went along with the police who forcibly took her to the police station, and illegally and wrongfully confined her for 17 hours. During this time, she was denied medicines, food and water. This further deteriorated her condition and added to the aggravation of her post-op health condition. . This abuse of State machinery by the ex-Director Arun Kumar who is credited with saying “ye larki aise nahi manegi, ise toh ek aadh gaddha khod kar gagdh do” about Rupashree , is very alarming.

Immediate action must be taken against him as well as the then DGP Bihar Mr. Abhayanand who he is related to and without whose complicity this illegal and wrongful confinement would not have been possible with such ease.

About Dr Arun Kumar and current situation: He had voluntarily retired from Nalanda Medical College and Hospital to join IGIMS on January 2004 as professor and Head of Department, Anaesthesia, moving upwards to become the Acting Director in June 2008, followed later in the year in December 2008 to become a full-fledged regular Director of the Institute, a position that he occupied for 5 years till December 2013. Currently he is Head of Department and Professor, Anaesthesia, at IGIMS and will be completing his service in September 2015.

While Dr Arun Kumar comfortably continues with his service and enjoys all related benefits, Rupashree continues to run from pillar to post seeking justice. She cannot work anywhere as her services were not dispensed with by the authorising body of IGIMS, the Board of Governors, as it is still pending for confirmation. So she is in a peculiar situation where is she not being ‘allowed’ to work, has not been paid her salary and there is no communication from the IGIMS about what it plans to do next. Rupashree is currently fighting eleven cases in all, of which seven cases are in lower court and four cases in the Patna High Court. She has also filed a complaint with the Bihar State Human Rights Commission.

She is without a job that is rightfully hers, without any financial support and is holding on to her on-campus accommodation at great jeopardy to her own life and most significantly, because she had managed to get a stay on her eviction from the Patna High Court.

All this violence, suffering, harassment because she said NO to the sexual advances made by ex-Director Dr Arun Kumar?

Alarming increase in global use of antibiotics

A research published in a medical journal has sounded an alarm on overuse and misuse of antibiotic drugs.

About 76 per cent of this increase has come from developing economies like China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Russia

A research published in a medical journal has sounded an alarm on overuse and misuse of antibiotic drugs.

The study, published by a team of researchers from Princeton University in journal Lancet Infectious Diseases last week, has revealed that the consumption of antibiotics around the globe has surged between 2000 and 2010. While globally, the antibiotic use has increased by 36 per cent, India has emerged as the world’s largest consumer of antibiotics with a 62 per cent increase in use. About 76 per cent of this increase has come from developing economies like China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Russia.

The researchers studied consumption of antibiotics in 71 countries and seasonal differences and patterns in consumption in 63 of them. “Despite a fall in usage of antibiotics over the last decade, the US still has the greatest per capita consumption rates, more than double of that in India,” said the study.

Some good and bad news
The findings of the study indicate an increase in antibacterial usage in developing countries, implying that more people had access to medicine. But unfortunately, most of the use was not monitored by health officials. An alarming increase was also seen in the consumption of last-resort drugs such as the kind belonging to carbapenem class, which are broad spectrum antibiotics prescribed only for diseases for which there is no other known cure.

Researchers have also found that antibacterial medication was being misused at times. For example, in most countries, usage peaked around flu season. Since, flu is caused by virus, the medicine would have little or no effect on illness. It would, instead, pave the way for microbes to develop resistance to the drugs. In India, the usage peaked around the end of monsoon. A similar trend was noticed for other virus-borne and fever-producing diseases like chikungunya and dengue.

Such unmonitored use of antibiotics has led to an alarming increase in antibiotic resistance. Diseases caused by resistant bacteria have been known to be unresponsive to normal treatments and result in a higher probability of death. “New resistance mechanisms emerge and spread globally threatening our ability to treat common infectious diseases, resulting in death and disability of individuals who until recently could continue a normal course of life,” said World Health organization (WHO), in its recent report on antimicrobial resistance.

The researchers from Princeton University have called for rational use of antibiotics through coordinated efforts, particularly by the BRICS countries where the increase in usage has been the most marked. It was noted that public health officials in these countries were using antibacterial medicine as a quick fix to health woes rather than actually implementing sanitation reforms to prevent the occurrence of disease in the first place.

Mumbai: Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Hospital (KDAH) has apologised to the Maharashtra Medical Council (MMC) for offering incentives to doctors referring patients to the hospital. The hospital attributed it to the ‘over-enthusiasm’ of the marketing department and assured restraint in future. The cut offered to doctors ranged between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2.5 lakh.

The hospital’s apology follows a show-cause notice by the medical council in May.

The MMC has now asked the BMC to take action against the hospital.

Since MMC is a quasi-judicial body overseeing the functioning of doctors practising modern medicine, it can act only against doctors and not against hospitals. That’s why it has asked BMC to move against the hospital.

The MMC alleged the hospital has been sending entry forms, titled Elite Forum, to various doctors.

“We had received the form from two doctors… it shows rewards for admissions. This indicates doctors are offered a cut for referring patients to the hospital,” MMC president Dr Kishor Taori said.

The two-page Elite Forum form promises a “reward” of Rs1 lakh for 40 admissions per annum, Rs1.5 lakh for 50 admissions and Rs2.5 lakh for 75 admissions.

Doctors have to sign and stamp a statement in the form that reads: “I am very happy to know that KDAH has introduced an ELITE FORUM for membership by invitation to senior doctors, for partnering KDAH, and jointly help bring about unique patient experience in line with the best of global hospitals.”

In its letter to the BMC, the MMC has sent its findings. “MMC can take action only against doctors as doctors are registered with us. In this case, since the hospital is guilty, we have asked BMC to look into the matter. It is the first of its kind case for both MMC and BMC…”

“Cut practice is very dangerous and spoils doctor-patient relationship. MMC is trying to improve this relationship,” said Taori.

dna has copies of the Elite Forum, the MMC letter to BMC and also KDAH’s apology.

The cut practice issue shot into the public domain after Dr H S Bawaskar filed a complaint with the MMC against a private diagnostic laboratory. Bawaskar, based in Mahad had asked one patient to undergo a CT scan last year. The patient underwent the scan at a private diagnostic laboratory in Pune. After the test, the laboratory sent a cheque worth Rs1,200 to Bawaskar. When Bawaskar contacted the lab, he was told the cheque was his professional fee.

The similarity between the manifestos of the Congress and the BJP – the latter came out today – has caused much comment. If anything, this reflects the ideological convergence between the two largest parties on many economic issues. But a detailed reading provides considerable texture to the differences and to the similarities, underlining the different focuses of the two parties.

What, first, are the big expensive similarities?

· Housing for all (free in neither, low-cost in both)
· Healthcare for all (free in neither, low-cost in both. Free medicines from the Congress)

If anything, this reinforces the idea that both parties are committed to a welfarist idea of India. The anti-dole rhetoric of the BJP is not reflected in its most important actionable promises. In neither manifesto is the cost of these initiatives estimated, or their impact on the fiscal deficitmentioned. Additional evidence of this welfarist convergence is the manner in which the BJP promises to better implement the Congress’ Right to Food – and the Congress promises to expand the BJP’s Antyodaya programme, which targets food to the very poorest. Both parties also promise to refocus welfarism on outcomes and the quality of services provided.

There are several concepts in the Congress that are not in the BJP’s. Some of these may surprise reformists – though, of course, the party’s ability to implement them will be questioned given its recent history in power.

· Replacing subsidies with user charges: The word “subsidies” is not found in the BJP’s manifesto, although a generic commitment to fiscal discipline is. The Congress, on the other hand, promises to reduce subsidies: “Given the limited resources, and the many claims on the resources, we must choose the subsidies that are absolutely necessary and give them only to the absolutely deserving. We will also consider introducing sensible user charges…”

· Financial sector reforms: Although a hallmark of the last NDA government, the BJP has largely ignored financial openness and innovation; the Congress, however, promises an actionable timetable on financial-sector reform, already the subject of an excellent report from Ajay Shah and others.

· Direct benefit transfers: Another way to reduce the subsidy bill, and one much beloved of economists. The Congress, in spite of recent problems with Aadhaar, repeats that it will follow through with this if returned to office. The BJP mentions cash transfers not at all.

· Education/skill vouchers, for SC/ST: A very popular idea with economic liberals is the provision of choice to those who want to invest in their human capital. The Congress suggests it will provide vouchers, redeemable against any course, for young people from Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes who want to develop their skills.

· Unique ID: Aadhaar is repeatedly mentioned in the Congress manifesto. Not only is that not mentioned in the BJP’s, but neither is the NDA’s own project, the National Population Register. There is, however, an odd mention of “ID cards for labourers in the unorganised sector” in the BJP’s manifesto. If this is different from Aadhaar, then it will involve considerable duplication; making it compulsory might well raise red tape and reduce unemployment. It’s probably a product of the widespread phobia about Bangladeshi immigration.

· Providing proteins, not just carbs: A constant refrain of those who disapprove of the current approach to food security has been the over-emphasis on foodgrain at the cost of other essentials. The Congress says that it will also include, under the Antyodaya scheme, protein-rich pulses and cooking oil.

· Animal husbandry: Oddly, unlike in the Congress’, I couldn’t find a mention of animal husbandry, a fast-growing rural business, in the BJP’s manifesto at all. A vegetarian Gujarat model?

Here are some concepts in the BJP’s manifesto, but not in Congress:

· “Port-led development”: Spinning off Narendra Modi’s efforts in Gujarat, ports are given special emphasis by the BJP, and largely ignored by the Congress. The BJP’s manifesto emphasises not just building and improving ports, but also coastal highways, special railway lines linking the hinterland to active ports, and “agri-rail”, presumably with refrigerated cars.

· River interlinking (“based on feasibility”): Like ports, river inter-linking was one of the big ideas of the Vajpayee era. Since then it’s run into much trouble. But the BJP’s manifesto, in keeping with a larger emphasis on infrastructure development, resurrects the idea.

· Special credit facilities to real estate sector: A promise in the BJP’s manifesto, as part of its effort to ensure a home for all. Can wind up being a handout to bankrupt developers and greedy politicians, without real structural reform of the sector.

· New specialised banks: Not fazed by the mockery of the “women’s bank” that Finance Minister P Chidambaram announced last year, the BJP has suggested two such tokenist institutions: a“worker’s bank” and a “mobile women’s bank”.

· Online learning: Unlike the Congress, the BJP has figured out that “massive open online courses”, or MOOCs, are perhaps the quickest and best way to scale up education. This is in keeping with its stated focus on younger, more aspirational people.

· Tourism: Not mentioned in the Congress’ manifesto, but a major thrust focus in the BJP’s. This is in keeping with Mr Modi’s speeches. In the book Moditva, it is even suggested that tourism reduces terrorism.

· Factories as families: One unusual suggestion in the BJP’s manifesto: “Encourage industry owners and labour to embrace concept of Industry Family, in which industry owners and labour bond as a family.” This is either very Gandhian or very Japanese.

· Fast-track courts for hoarders: The UPA has repeatedly tried to blame hoarders and black-marketeers for volatile food prices. It is the BJP, however, that promises fast-track courts for hoarders as a way of controlling food inflation. Mr Modi has often complained that the Centre shut down special funding for states’ fast-track courts.

· Ayurgenomics. Many were puzzled by this commitment from the BJP: “We will start integrated courses for Indian System of Medicine (ISM) and modern science and Ayurgenomics.” (Ayurgenomics is apparently the Ayurveda of genetics.)

What phrases are missing in both the manifestos?

· “Privatisation” or “disinvestment”. Once the touchstone of reformist foreign policy; now neither party appears to want to touch the public sector. The BJP has long trumpeted the NDA’s record on disinvestment; it seems to have very noticeably retreated from any such agenda.

· “The United States of America”. Neither manifesto so much as mentions the US. The BJP’s talks vaguely about “mending equations” and avoiding “being led by big power interests”. The Congress’ mentions Pakistan, China, Brazil, South Africa, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, SAARC, and even the Non-Aligned Movement. But the US is clearly political poison right now.

(Photo via Shutterstock)A nurse helps an old man up from his chair. Holding onto her arms, he steps blindly forward, trusting her to lead him to his spot at the lunch table.

One man breathes through a respirator. Another gropes on the nightstand for his dentures. Yet another calls out to a passing doctor that he cannot remember his own name.

This may sound like a typical day at a home for the elderly but several independent investigations describe such scenes being played out in a much more unlikely place: in prisons across the United States that are now home to thousands of senior citizens.

A Human Rights Watch report entitled ‘Old Behind Bars’ says the number of prisoners aged 55 and older nearly quadrupled between 1995 and 2010, marking a 218 percent increase in just 15 years.

With over 16 percent of the national prison population falling into the “aging” category, experts say the U.S. prison system is beginning to resemble a gigantic geriatrics ward, at massive economic and humanitarian costs to society.

Low Risks, High Costs

Jamie Fellner, senior advisor of the U.S. Programme at Human Rights Watch, told IPS that “tough on crime” laws of the 1980s and 1990s resulted in a surge of decades-long sentences for crimes that hitherto carried no more than 10 to 15 years of jail time.

“When you have people serving life sentences, they’re going to die in prison, just like people serving 20-, 30- and 40-year sentences are inevitably going to grow old behind bars,” Fellner said.

Other sources, including a recent report by the Pew Center Charitable Trust, suggest that 1970s-era federal laws such as mandatory minimum provisions, “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” legislation, and heavy parole restrictions have also contributed to the spike in graying inmates.

Whatever the reasons, experts are agreed that the cost of imprisoning anyone over the age of 50 is astronomical. An ACLU report entitled ‘At America’s Expense’ found that, while it cost just 34,135 dollars a year to house the average prisoner, elderly inmates incurred almost double the expenses, reaching 69,000 dollars per prisoner annually.

Taxpayers shell out over 16 billion dollars every year to keep aging prisoners behind bars, an amount that exceeds the annual budget of the Department of Energy and even surpasses the Department of Education’s spending on improving elementary and secondary schools.

Such stark figures have pushed advocates to ask two fundamental questions that prison officials and the Justice Department seem reluctant to address: What is the purpose of incarcerating the elderly, and is there an alternative?

According to Laura Whitehorn, a political activist who spent 14 years in prison and now works on a New York-based campaign known as Release Aging People in Prison (RAPP), the extremely low recidivism rate for people over the age of 50 makes a strong case for expediting their release.

For instance, just seven percent of New York state prisoners released at ages 50-64 reoffended, a number that fell to just four percent for inmates over the age of 65. In comparison, the recidivism rate for all age groups hovers at close to 40 percent.

Furthermore, prisoners who have served considerable time could be huge assets to their communities, Whitehorn told IPS.

“The reason the prison advocacy movement is so vibrant now is because most organisations have several to many formerly incarcerated people on their staffs, providing keen ideas for what has to change in order to get us out of the current pit of perpetual punishment and the damage caused by the prison system.

“This is how we came up with the slogan ‘If the Risk is Low, Let Them Go’,” Whitehorn said, adding that, too often, parole boards look at the original sentence rather than a prisoner’s likelihood of reoffending when considering early release.

She recounted the recent case of an 86-year-old man who has served 40 years of a life sentence for a felony committed in the 1970s. Although he suffers from asthma, cancer and a neuromuscular disorder that confines him to a wheelchair, his parole board denied him release last year on the grounds that he was “likely” to reoffend.

Fellner told IPS that she interviewed a prisoner in Mississippi who was so old he had to stick the letters L and R on his shoes to remind him which went on the correct foot. “Do we really consider these people a threat to society?” she asked.

Punitive Philosophy

Fellner says the architecture of prisons was developed for the prototypical “tough young criminal”, resulting in institutions that are not easily navigable by infirm or disabled inmates. This inability is sometimes perceived as an unwillingness to cooperate with guards, earning elderly inmates punishments or longer sentences.

A senior citizen at a Pennsylvania state penitentiary told IPS under condition of anonymity that he was forced to spend a week in solitary confinement for refusing to pass through the metal detector without his cane.

“I’m 69 years old,” he said. “Without my cane I can’t stand. What do they expect me to do? Crawl through on my hands and knees?”

Officials at various institutions across the country are now questioning the necessity of keeping geriatrics locked up. Even Burl Cain, the warden at Louisiana State Penitentiary of Angola, recently told the ACLU it was a “shame” that his staff buried more inmates than they released out the front gates.

Of Louisiana’s 5,300 prisoners, 4,000 are serving life without parole, while 1,200 are over the age of 60.

Still, the decision to release elderly inmates is not up to prison officials alone. According to Fellner, the U.S. incarceration system is governed by a highly punitive philosophy that, coupled with strong lobbying by organisations representing the families of victims, makes it tough to effect substantial changes.

“Personal, professional and institutional party politics all make it very difficult to take steps on behalf of someone who has committed a crime,” she said.

“It’s a risk that few politicians are willing to take. Even President Obama only commuted eight citizens this year – there are 200,000 federal inmates and he could only find eight who were eligible for clemency? Despite some important progress, this work is still very much in the margins.”

KRITIKA SHARMA, New Delhi

Thirty-five people died in judicial custody in 2013 compared to 18 in 2012 and jail insiders attribute it primarily to lack of medical facilities and improper surveillance inside.

Of the 35 inmates who died in 2013, two committed suicide — including Ram Singh, an accused in the December 16 gang-rape — and two were murdered. The remaining 31 died of different medical conditions.

The authorities claim that most deaths inside the prisons were natural and medical evacuations are prompt.

“There is a 150-bed hospital in central jail no. 3 and dispensaries attached to other jails,” said a jail official.

Medical facilities inside the jail were revamped in 1996 after Justice Leila Seth reviewed the facilities in the wake of the controversial death of Kerala-based business tycoon and biscuit king Rajan Pillai inside Tihar.

Justice Seth had suggested the need for a thorough overhauling of arrangements in prisons to provide medical care and facilities. She found that most prisons were not equipped with an effective communication system for informing the authorities concerned in case of a medical emergency.

Besides establishing such a system, inmates must be thoroughly briefed about how to seek medical aid in case of emergency, she had suggested.

Insiders, however, say that despite implementing all the required systems, it still takes 45 minutes to an hour to provide care to patients in case of an emergency, especially during night hours.

Last year, two murders were reported inside the jail. In one incident, an inmate named Mohammad Javed was brutally murdered during roll call. A resident of Seelampur, he is lodged in jail in connection with a murder case.

The jail authorities were tight-lipped over the matter and said the magisterial inquiry is still pending.

In 2012, 16 inmates died inside the jail due to undisclosed reasons and two prisoners committed suicide.

Magisterial inquiries were conducted into every death, but the reports in the suicide and murders cases are yet to come.

As many as 14,000 prisoners are lodged in the nine jails of Tihar, of whom 600 are women.

Public health program managers and activists, many of whom receive support from the Global Fund, have warned of potentially catastrophic consequences for reducing Uganda‘s HIV infection rate should President Yoweri Museveni follow through on a plan announced on 14 February to sign into law a repressive bill effectively banning homosexuality.

The Anti Homosexuality Bill was passed by parliament in December. Earlier versions of the bill would have imposed the death penalty on individuals found guilty of ‘aggravated homosexuality’; that penalty, in the version before Museveni, was changed to life in prison.

Most worrisome to those who are implementing the more than $130 million in activities funded by Global Fund grants are the terms of the bill that threaten harsh penalties for those who would promote or aid and abet homosexuality: a category that could include government- and externally funded programs providing essential services for men who have sex with men and other key populations.

Dozens of Ugandan and international clinicians, researchers and academics signed a letter dated 6 February encouraging that Museveni veto the bill, arguing that not only did it violate the national constitution to protect the freedoms of all Ugandans but also contradicted scientific evidence.

Further, the letter, which bore among others the signature of the UN Special Envoy on AIDS in Africa, who is also the former vice president of Uganda, Dr Sepciosa Wandira Kazibwe, argued that the bill would “further exacerbate the marginalization, discrimination and exclusion of people known to be, or suspected of being homosexual,” meaning they would be less able to access health services and thus more at risk of infection or of infecting other people with HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

HIV prevalence among men who have sex with men is estimated at 13%: more than three times the average prevalence among men who have sex exclusively with women (4.1%) and nearly twice the national generalized prevalence of 7.3%.

Uganda has also experienced a steady rise in HIV incidence since 2005, despite widely acclaimed early success in anti-retroviral treatment and prevention of mother-to-child transmission.

The bill will also provide cover – based on a presupposed fear or institutionalized stigma – for health workers to discriminate in the provision of medical services to members of the LGBT community.

The bill’s passage into law is likely to have significant direct implications for both outreach activities and service delivery supported by the Global Fund.

It is also likely to eviscerate any progress made in implementing a Key Affected Populations pilot program in Uganda. This pilot, funded by the Global Fund Secretariat, is designed to strengthen engagement of men who have sex with men, sex workers, fishing communities and other key populations in shaping the 2014 HIV concept note under the new funding model. The pilot is also designed to strengthen representation of, and accountability to, key affected populations on Uganda’s country coordination mechanism.